Power, Legitimacy and the Economy

Chairman Mao declared that "power comes out of the barrel of a gun"; and over the millennia many regimes all over the world have gained and held power by the power of the sling, the arrow, the spear, the sword and the gun. The Bible tells how the pyramid-building rulers of Egypt consolidated their power over centuries by maintaining state granaries, in which crop surpluses were stored in fruitful years, which could then be doled-out to maintain the people when harvests were insufficient; whether that was due to crop failure [usually due to irregular weather] or to military intervention with the farming year [as when 'the peoples of the sea' invaded some provinces].

The comfortable delusion upon which the European Union was built is that the founder states were mature democracies, where the mass of the population acquiesced in the constitutional order and selected between political parties in regular, orderly elections; largely on the basis of their performance or promises in developing the economy. Since 1995 several states were admitted that had recently been 'democratised' after decades under the Communists gun-rule, and their dissent from the consensus established in Brussels [not least, on inward migration from outside Europe] has now become conspicuous. But [as has been pointed out before in this blog] the west European democracies were new when the Treaty of Rome was signed. Germany was fascist and brutal until mid-1945, Italy was in a similar state. France was still recovering from the hidden conflict between wartime collaborators and resistants. Smaller states with monarchies had been able more quickly after 1945 to establish a sort of normalcy, but all carried legacy issues from the war [except Sweden, which had the great luck to maintain its neutrality]. The EU had a mock-democratic parliament, which was subject to the farce of moving every month from Brussels to Strasbourg that was the proof of its impotence: if the assembly had an iota of real power the members would have opted for a fixed location.

The United Kingdom and Ireland joined the Common Market together, with the secret agenda [agreed in London and Dublin, but not shared with the broad electorate in either country] that a 'peace process' could follow in Ireland as the identities of the two states was subsumed in the European project. Before Mrs Thatcher won her infamous 'rebate', the UK was paying in massive amounts to  the Common Market funds that made similarly vast payments to Irish farmers and local authorities. A generation on, Mrs May and her pathetic cabinet seem not to know that, so they delude themselves that are avoiding the crunch on the Irish Question by putting up notions for a customs arrangement that is very much secondary to the political fudge. If the political fudge is ignored the whole Brexit project will end in violence. It is more than a coincidence that Gerry Adams has announced his intention to stand down: if there is to be a new civil war in Ireland [with inevitable excursions into the British mainland] it will necessarily be  conducted by a new, vigorous Republican high command.

If this interpretation of current events seems apocalyptic, be aware that if consent is withdrawn by a coherent component of the population in any country [or province] the men and women of violence will seek to develop that situation. Mercifully, there is no sign of such a thing happening in Catalonia; but Ireland has been a different case, for centuries.

If a regime is able to provide the mass of the people with palpable economic benefits, as the pyramid-builders did - and as the welfare state did in western Europe for the half-century after 1950 - revolt against the centralised state is rare: Northern Ireland, the Basque region and a few other cases were the exceptions that proved the rule because there were deep historical reasons for those special cases. It is significant that as the Irish Republic gained more of the advantages of a welfare economy, so the politicians in that state eschewed the IRA and their political allies more and more deeply.

Meanwhile, in Zimbabwe massive crowds have assembled to support the army and the ruling ZanuPF party in their attempt to replace Mugabe by his erstwhile deputy. 'The crocodile', as he is known, is a notorious enforcer; hitherto in Mugabe's interests. It was he who unleashed North Korean mercenaries to support his own thugs in killing at least 20,000 Matabele. It was he who organised such beatings of opposition voters in the last presidential election that the opposition withdrew from the second round and allowed Mugabe to reap his 'democratic' mandate. By all accounts he is less blatantly kleptocratic than Grace Mugabe, who was being set up as the next president. Optimists are hoping that the crocodile will metamorphose into a consensualist who can forge a truly 'national' government, but the odds are stacked against that. Once the dust settles on Mugabe's departure, Zimbabwe will revert to rule by fist and cane, supplemented - as judged necessary - by bullets: as in the case in most of Africa.

The chances of Zimbabwe approaching any credible standard of democracy within fifty years are very small.

The chances of the beneficent Brussels fantasy lasting for another fifty years are diminishing: as Mrs Merkel's struggle to build a coalition well illustrates.